Donated 80-year-old letters from home to POW fill a gap in the Australian War Memorial's collection

Australia Broadcast Center

15 hours ago

For almost three years, John Franklin's family wrote him letters, not knowing if he was dead or alive.
After the private in the Australian Army became a Japanese prisoner of war during WW2, his family back home in Bowral, NSW, refused to give up hope that their beloved boy would come home.
Now, 80 years after they were written, 31 letters and telegrams sent by the Franklin family have been donated to the Australian War Memorial (AWM).
Mr Franklin's niece, Rae-Maree Curtis, said she talked about the war with her uncle but only read the letters after his death.
She has kept reading them for the 13 years they have been in her possession, and they still bring her to tears.
"The letters reveal the agony of war," she said.
The earliest letter to John was written by his father William in 1942, with no certainty that his son was alive, yet he apologised for missing John's birthday and suggested celebrating another time.
"Every time I'm knitting a pair of socks I think of you, and I know you haven't any," his mother wrote in another letter.
In 1943, the Japanese limited all telegrams to just 25 words.
The Franklin family tried to condense all family news into fewer and fewer words.
Private Franklin was one of around 2,500 out of more than 20,000 Australian POWs taken by the Japanese back to Japan to keep industry operating during the war.
He worked in the Kawasaki shipbuilding factory — now better known for motorcycles — and coal mines.
Around one-third of the total letters sent by the family made it to Private Franklin because the Japanese blocked correspondence and would not send the others on.
Finally, in 1945, the family received a letter from John.
"I feel as though I've been born and am starting life all over again. I feel pretty guilty for the worry I must have caused you, but everything is OK now. Don't try and send money or anything — but I'd give a fortune for a letter … I wish you could see me here puffing on a big cigar after a snack of donuts and coffee," he wrote.
AWM director Matt Anderson said reading the letters was like "eavesdropping on an intensely personal relationship".
"Through this gift — through these stories — he's telling the story of a prisoner … but through these stories he's reminding us to think of all of them — their hopes and dreams and what became of them when they came home."
Mr Anderson said it was "very unusual" to have letters from family members to prisoners during the war.
"Often, if soldiers kept a diary, they had to keep that diary hidden," he said.
He was struck by the economy of words in the letters.
"What would you say if you had 25 words to convey to your family everything you want to tell them?" he said.
"They're a time capsule.
"The most important thing we can do is to preserve them from this point onwards."
The letters will now go through a process of conservation, curation, preservation, and digitisation as they are added to the AWM's private records collection.
Curator Bryce Abraham is not aware of any other letters in the collection relating to soldiers at the Kawasaki factory.
"It's really quite unique."